Did the USSR want to conquer the US?

Great Debates
41

I would bet that the pentagon has a plan to invade every country on the face of the earth. In other words, we intend world conquest?

[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
(And I use the word Russians as opposed to Soviets as their often extreme nationalism was and is, almost as much a driving force in their imperialist/expansionist drives as their ideology)
[/QUOTE]

This is exactly the point. All the examples you gave are nations that had been part of the Russian Empire for decades, and were lost after WWI. In fact Soviet Eastern Europe was pretty much what every Czar Russia ever had tried to obtain, with the exception of Yugoslavia (which joined the Soviet bloc independently) and Istanbul (which the Russians never took).

42

Honestly, I think MAD (mutually assured destruction) saved both sides from taking those dangerous steps. Based on that, I doubt the USSR had any Red Dawn like scenarios in place.

43

Possibly, but not in this thread.

The Soviets had already been invaded not only by Germany, but by the U.S., U.K., and France, with a few Canadians dragged along for good measure.

At the end of WWII, the Allies all found themselves in Germany, facing each other, with a serious lack of trust between the Soviets and the Western forces. Both sides simply never backed off on their troop strengths based on that mutual distrust. This was not a case of Stalin having a goal of invading Western Europe, just the natural balance of power tension that tends to exist among large, heavily armed nations with a shared border, (the border, in this case, being the division of Germany rather than an actual bi-national frontier). Once the dynamics were in place with both sides continuing to fund troop deployments, that mutual distrust was simply an engine that fed itself until one side finally went broke.

Stalin probably lost his interest in the great socialist revolution about the time that he chased Trotsky out of the Soviet Union. After that, the various “communist” parties and movements were simply one tool/tactic to keep his international foes at bay, scattering their efforts to put out fires around the globe. The local people might have thought that they were fighting for the Revolution, but to the Soviets, they were just handy tools to keep the U.S. and its allies busy. If a country happened to “go communist,” that certainly provided the Soviets with one more ally in the Great Game, but an actual stateless Communist world was never a serious desire of Soviet leaders after the 1930s.

Even if Stalin ever harbored any designs regarding Western Europe, which I find unlikely, there is no evidence that Kruschev or Breshnev were ever interested in anything more than keeping the West at arms length by using the Warsaw Pact countries as a buffer rather than a staging area.

44

tomndebb, assuming that you are correct and that the Soviets had no intention of offensive operations into Western Europe I’m puzzled why they would have that force mix. It was heavy on offensive elements and it was forward deployed. If they were really worried about an invasion, or even if they were worried about some sort of Eastern Bloc rebellion or revolt it seems to me that it would make more sense to put in heavy defenses and garrison units and move a lot of that combat power well back to meet a NATO offensive. I mean, that’s the force mix that the US had during that time…it was more dispersed, heavy on troop who were deployed in a more defensive posture with heavy stuff set back to defend against an attack. From an earlier cite there were over 4000 Russian tanks in East Germany alone (and afaict this didn’t count the numbers of East German tanks or formations).

I’m not saying that the Russians were ever poised to send the balloon up and kick off WWIII, but it just doesn’t seem reasonable given what they had and how they had it deployed that they were thinking defensively and had no thought to offensive operations. Especially considering that the US and NATO couldn’t come close to matching their numbers (just a WAG, but my guess is the US had maybe 4k tanks deployed to cover ALL of Europe, not just Germany…and that even with the numbers from NATO we would have been hard pressed to match just the numbers of Russian and East German forces alone, not to mention what Russia and it’s allies had in the other Eastern Bloc countries, or what it had back in Russia for that matter).

I think the only thing that kept the Russians from venturing west is the fact that both sides had nuclear weapons, and that essentially any war was unwin-able by either side.

At any rate, like I said earlier, whether the USSR had or didn’t have designs on Western Europe, I don’t see any plausible way they could have invaded and conquered the continental US, movies and books to the contrary. A real war between the US and USSR would have been fought in Europe, with the end stages (or even the opening ones) going nuclear…and at the end of that no one would have been able to invade anyone else. They would have had their hands full just trying to keep their own countries going (and probably not be very successful at that).

-XT

45

Yes, but the plan was to start with Canada, Mexico, and Central America, to get the extra five armies per turn.

46

I think the Soviet warplan for WWIII was basically an entirely offensive war regardless of the circumstances. Think of the Israelis in 1967 detecting the imminent Egyptian attack and so attacking first to destroy their air force and seize the Sinai. It’s not more complicated than “the best defense is a good offense”. In other words, their intentions were to conquer Western Europe if war broke out, but there’s little indication that they wanted to start that war.

The fact that the Soviet Union absorbed unbelievable losses in WWII informed this posture. They knew that they could hold a defensive position, absorb the first blow, and counterattack, but why sit back and absorb the first blow if you don’t have to?

47

I agree. Also, I think that the Soviets intended their forward deployed formations to be big threatening hammers that would cow the US and Western Europe and thus (hopefully) prevent war. But to say that all that combat power wasn’t offensively oriented, and that the USSR didn’t know this and didn’t plan on using it offensively is, to me, just wrong. The thing is, just because you have the combat power and the plans doesn’t mean you WILL use it (obviously they never did)…merely that you COULD use it.

-XT

48

Soviet-led communists didn’t need much of an excuse to invade a country, but for an invasion of W Europe they had no excuse whatsoever.

If therre had been a significant communist movement on the verge of taking control in W Germany and/or France, (and in the absence of strong NATO forces)that might have signaled that it was time to invade and help “our comrades”. But a “cold” invasion of a major country where communism is unpopular is a pretty tall order.

Remember, communism isn’t about conquering people out of sheer hostility and selfishness, it’s about liberating the workers, blah-blah-blah. I doubt if Soviet leaders went around with their heads in the clouds of Marxist ideology; there are practical realities to consider (again, even assuming a weaker Western military). They had bitten off quite a bit to chew with their occupation of E Europe.

When Khruschev said, “We will bury you!”, I don’t think he meant, “under the rubble of our bombing, which will commence shortly”. I think it was more along the olines of the metaphorical “ash heap of history” or as in “We’ll be present at your funeral”, meaning capitaism’s. Old-line communists were always predicting the eventual triumph of communism, but the Western proletariat’s rising up was an essential ingredient, and that never happened.

During the 1960s, it was the 1960s in the USSR as well. A generation gap emerged and attitudes changed. The Beatles in particular had a huge influence. People over there began to see that Westerers are not such bad people and they seem to be having a lot of fun. Popular support for invading the West withered away, and that counts for something, dictatorship or no. Holding on to what you have alredy gained is another matter, but I think that by the end of that decade, sending the baloon up like that had gradually become unthinkable, even for the top leadership.

49

I have no doubt that the Soviets would have loved to add Western Europe to their empire, given a realistic chance opened up by political events. However, they were already holding on to a sizable and restless East European empire. Stalin was never above imperial land-grabs where the opportunity presented - witness his antics before WW2 - but he was always more of a realist than Hitler - he never engaged in one-on-one battles with opponents his own or similar size for aggressive expansion (his thing with Finland was a woeful miscalculation on his part, against an opponent comparatively tiny). Stalin’s successors were more conservative than him.

The chances of Soviet tanks rumbling across West Germany, in a naked land-grab? I’d say, very slight. Unless in response to some sort of chrisis which they thought gave them an opportunity to seize something with little or no retaliation. The fact is that the Soviets had their hands full with the empire they already had.

Edit: the notion of the Soviets invading the US was always a laughable absurdity.

50

The problem with “did they intend to conquer the US/Western Europe?” is the notion of “intend”. The problem is that the Soviets knew that any invasion of Western Europe would be catastrophic. Even before the ICBM, we had hundreds of nuclear bombers that would have devastated the USSR. NATO conventional forces were smaller than the Soviets, but better trained, better equipped, better motivated, and better lead.

Of course the Soviet military was offensively oriented, because this was their winning formula in WWII. That was how they crushed the Nazis in the last war, so that’s how they planned the next war.

But were those forces poised on the alert, just waiting for the order to plunge through the Fulda Gap? No, things never go to that point, even during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets didn’t seriously plan on invading Western Europe, because they knew that even if they won, they’d be devastated. Whether the Soviet leaders went to bed every night shedding bitter tears because they didn’t get to invade Western Europe that day is irrelevant, because there never was a time when such an invasion had a decent shot at success.

Their actual strategy was to support proxy wars around the globe, isolate the Western Countries, and eventually they’d be able to march west unopposed. As the Sun Tzu quote goes, “Defeated warriors go to war, then seek to win. Victorious warriors win first, then go to war.”

That isn’t to say that WWIII couldn’t have happened by accident, over some flashpoint that spilled out of control. Just that the Soviets never seriously planned to invade the West one Tuesday afternoon because there was never a time when the correlation of forces made victory inevitable.

51

I think that their military thoughts were simply offensive, regardless whether there was a political desire for conquest.

We have had twenty years of people poking around the old Kremlin and I cannot think of anyone who has turned up any realistic plans for Western expansion beyond the Warsaw Pact lines. For example, they never made a serious bid to annex Austria or even to maintain the Red Zone in the manner of divided Germany, pulling out of that country at pretty much the same time that the Western Allies did in 1955.

52

There isn’t any need to do so.

NATO was a substantial military power that had hundreds of thousands of top notch troops that would have had to be subdued. Canada isn’t and doesn’t.

Obviously, it’s not a perfect analogy, but the fact remains the Soviets didn’t invade, it wouldn’t have made a great deal of sense for them to invade without being attacked first, and had they suddenly invaded the virtually certain result would have been nuclear war. They weren’t going to invade Western Europe, and an invasion of the USA is preposterous.

53

Destroy the US? Sure! Brezhnev loved to cover himself with medals and ribbons and played a very good chess game.

The Soviets dominated as many countries as it could and Brezhnev’s doctrine was about OTHER countries and thier choice for socialism, as did Reagan’s doctrine talk of OTHER countries right to choose capitalism …

We couldn’t declair a Soviet-American war and win … ah… but to fight on OTHER people’s turf, now that’s different.

Brezhnev tried to check-mate us at many turns… Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Grenada, El Salvadore and we made our chess moves. We turned them back from Cuba by force for instance. It worked. They would not risk a war on our turf or theirs. But Kennedy did not allow it.

Yes, they wanted to destroy us, but it would have to be done differently than in a normal war.

54

There’s nothing either offensive or defensive about that force mix, it’s just the force mix of modern fully mechanized units. Roughly 1-2-1-1/6-1/6 tanks, afvs, artillery, aircraft and helos. I swore I had a copy of the IISS The Military Balance 1989/90 about but it must be in storage, so the closest I could find is the 1996/97 copy, by which point USAEUR had been reduced to only an under strength V Corps with only enough POMCUS (Prepositioned Overseas Material Contained in Unit Sets) to bring it up to full strength. Equipment, including POMCUS amounted to:

*1,120 MBT
*893 AIFV
*1,359 APC
*so 2,252 armored vehicles in total combining AIFV and APCs
*725 arty/MRL/mor
*113 attack helos
*72 combat aircraft in USAFE

The force mix is close enough to identical of roughly 1-2-1-1/6-1/6 tanks, afvs, artillery, helos and aircraft. In 1989/90 the force mix would be approximately the same, only triple the size, as V and VII Corps were forward deployed and only slightly under strength, with REFORGER set to fly in the manpower of the rest of V and VII corps and the entire III Corps to mate up with their POMCUS equipment in 10 days. Tripling it would give:

*3,360 MBT
*6,756 armored vehicles
*2,175 artillery pieces
*339 attack helos
*216 combat aircraft

This is the force the US alone would have in West Germany within 10 days of initiating REFORGER.

55

Ford and Carter tried to put together talks (SALT : Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) that fell through when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Reagan was probably delighted that it fell through. An equal military would support the cold war to continue indefinately.

Instead, he called the Soviet Union “The Evil Empire” and proceeded to provoke the USSR by by spending and spending and SPENDING on the military.

"Join the mariines! the tv said. “Join the navy!”

The US government alluded to something called “Star Wars,” a more fictional than not plan to dominate the world. Scary to the Soviets don’t you think?

Now Gorbichev was willing to meet at Reykiavik. But Reagan would not back down. Star Wars would stand. This was not the SALT that Carter wanted. Quite the opposite.

The US won the cold war by out-spending and terrifying the USSR to spend itself into oblivion.

Reagan caused a HUGE deficit. Surely he knew that! But was willing to risk it. He believed he could. There was no real star wars to spend money on. It was a deception. A choice was made. A huge deficite now, vs a cold war forever.

Somebody else could now work on the US economy. Clinton could close military bases, because there no longer was there a cold war.

We will be in debt for a very long time. The former Soviet regions will have it bad too. But the cold war is over by creating a ridiculous military. And the illusion of it being even bigger than it was. Quite a chess game.

For a nation with a HUGE debt, we still looked pretty good. Until now. I doubt we could outspend China at the moment and not spend ourselves into oblivion.

We may never be the superpower we were. The huge debt had it’s purpose, now we’re in trouble. I hope Obama has the brains to dig us out of this. It’s not a huge leap to figure out why the conservatives don’t want to spend any money on a health bill. The cold war cost us so much, maybe we won’t EVER have a health plan as good as other nations. : gulp : Yes, we CAN blame the lack of good health care on the Reagan.

By the way, my political leanings are as a radical moderate. The two vastly dominant polars spend a huge amount of time and money trying desperataly todefeat each other. We fight ourselves. Lobbyists make out like bandits. Something that the Soviets tried to avoid.

Capitalism is better than other types of economics, but I really wish there was such a thing here as the benevolent despot. How Christians would dread such a thing though. They would fight such a thing to their last breath. A benevolent despot spells the end.

: sigh :

56

Other than Cuba. I wonder what would have happened if they had been successful at setting up their bases there? Would they have gone on to other South American countries?

57

[QUOTE=Dissonance]
This is the force the US alone would have in West Germany within 10 days of initiating REFORGER.
[/QUOTE]

Sort of a key point there. Within 10 days of initiating Reforger. As opposed to having that force mix already forward deployed. And this is just what they had in East Germany. It doesn’t count what they had in other Eastern Bloc countries. It’s the difference between an inherently offensive posture and an inherently defensive one.

I’m sort of done in this thread, but want to acknowledge that I actually do agree with RickJay and tomndebb’s last posts…the Soviets didn’t invade after all. Just because a force is offensively postured doesn’t mean it has to be used or that it’s inevitable that war has to happen. Obviously there were mitigating factors…namely nuclear weapons. The Soviets were well aware that if they sent their troops west this would probably kick off a nuclear exchange, and one that neither side could win. I don’t think that this fact demonstrates that the Soviet Union had no desire or plans for an invasion of Western Europe, merely that the reality of the situation necessitated that it never happen.

As for the OP, as I’ve said I don’t believe it was ever possible for the USSR to conquer the US in some sort of Red Dawn type scenario. It was simply not possible, even if the Soviets had successfully conquered Western Europe first.

Anyway, it seems the thread has wound down so I’ll leave it at that. I don’t think that as far as the actual question asked in the OP that there is much or any debate as it doesn’t seem anyone thinks it would be possible.

-XT

58

I’m sure a lot of people were offended. :wink:

59

That is the force the US had forward deployed. All of the material was in place along with ~2/3s of the manpower; all that was needed to have every heavy division in the entire US Army in West Germany aside from the 24th Inf (Mech) which was slated as the RDF heavy division was to fly in the manpower, which was practiced annually. It doesn’t count what the rest of NATO had in place in West Germany from the British Army of the Rhine, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and France; along with the equipment and formations of these nations sitting right next door in their respective countries. Nor does it include the Bundeshwehr. As RickJay said “I’m also a bit confused as to the assumption NATO’s standing forces would have been some ki[n]d of easy pickings.” The force mix of any NATO or Warsaw Pact nation was near identical; the mix being that of modern fully mechanized forces. All that it is evidence of by itself is that both sides were going to fight in Central Europe with heavy mechanized formations as opposed to foot-bound infantry who wouldn’t be able to keep pace with the speed of operations. The shift in NATO from a defense in depth to forward defense could be seen as an offensively oriented posture, it certainly was by the paranoid in the USSR.

60

My impression was that “forward defence” was simply a political necessity for NATO, as its constituent members objected to a defence-in-depth which would have seen half or more of West Germany become a (potential) battlefield.